Sorry all for the long delay, it's been a truly hectic month and a bit for me, currently my Kemper is hooked up to my live rig and disconnected from the Focusrite but I will be able to try some of these suggestions in a week or so, however I do have some responses/updates and mostly good news since I made the original post:
AbcMusic - I have been on top of my output section as I noticed other people have missed this simple fix as well, going through the forums. So I was sure it wasn't occurring for me and I happily ruled out that variable but thanks for your suggestion
Wheresthedug - I haven't had a chance to try the analog inputs, at least not since purchasing the Adam monitors, originally I tried the analog inputs going out into a hi-fi stereo system via a 3.5mm jack, though that's probably largely irrelevant compared to using monitors so I will give this a whirl as soon as I can.
V8guitar - I did see this suggestion in another forum page and tried headphones direct out of the Kemper vs via the Focusrite a few months back. There was a subtle but noticeable difference in the shape of a more 'authentic' feel when playing and a bit more zing in the high end but at the time, but it didn't seem like there could much more going on than just a bit of colouring from the preamp in the Focusrite, the Kemper always sounded much better to me through headphones than through the studio monitors regardless, which I always found surprising. Or at least it sounded far closer to the same profile coming out of my amplifier in the room.
Kaschko - I will record some samples via SPDIF and the analog inputs for comparison and upload here when the Kemper is connected once more to my computer. I haven't delved into reamping at all but is it safe to assume, based on what you've said, that using two vs one SPDIF cable shouldn't impact the recorded sound at all?
In the end I tried a few things:
- I found out that I could do a factory reset without needing to delete and reupload all of the profiles into the Kemper, so I did this.
- Immediately I noticed that the Kemper sounded about 5 times better through the monitors, the treble bandwidth I was missing 'came back' from the ether it disappeared to. So I guess I must have inadvertently tinkered my Kemper into oblivion without realising it, or some sort of bug had occurred... though to be honest it had the same issue from day one and I was seemingly always chasing my tail to resolve it, very confusing.
- Since the reset, the 'pure cabinet' parameter seems to do a lot more in terms of making the Kemper sound closer to a real amp, rather than just further removing the high frequencies from the sound.
I've now got the Kemper set with the low cut in the output section at 150hz, removing anything below that threshold (as far as I can tell). I admit I kind of don't like that I need to do this, because as far as I know the same ToneJunkie profiles I hear on their channel are not using this low cut and the required additional level of EQ to remove all of the seemingly very apparent 'boominess' concerns me and makes me think there's still some underlying issues, I have considered it could just be the fact I'm using a 2.1 setup, though the sub is set verrrry conservatively on about 2/10 volume, not sure.
Overall, since implementing the factory reset and low cut, this device has gone from completely unusable to nice sounding coming through monitors, maybe from a 2/10 to a 7 or 8/10.
I'm on the fence about just returning it, as it has honestly been a year of heartache and it still doesn't seem to sound as good as I originally thought it would, but also feel like I've F I N A L L Y made some kind of breakthrough with it, some actual progress. Hopefully I can salvage just a bit more perseverance.
Thanks for your responses